"The last four kings in
the Mahavamsa from 1739 to 1815 were Nayakkar princes
who were referred to as Vaduka Tamils in Sinhala
records. They claimed descent from Telugus (Telugu is
another Dravidian language) but spoke Tamil language
when they were ruling southern Tamilnadu from Mathurai.
Some Sinhala chiefs wanted to dislodge the Nayakkar and
become kings themselves but they could neither agree
among themselves nor get sufficient popular support. The
British who established their domination over the
maritime provinces of the island by 1798 exploited the
ambition of the Sinhala chiefs to make them traitors to
their king. Wikrema Rajasinghe alias Kannusamy, the last
Lankan/Tamil king, was made a prisoner and exiled to
India. The treacherous Sinhala chiefs gained nothing.
The whole of the island of Lanka became a British colony
for 133 years. Could modern day Sinhala politicians
learn any lesson from this history?"

How does one write the history of a country?
If one ethnic religious community in a country has a record
of its past, it should be utilized as an important source.
How the other community or communities which live in the
same country view that record is also important to assess
the historical value of that past record.

Archaeological explorations and epigraphy
are much more important than past records referring to
events which happened many centuries earlier. Foreign
notices also provide an important source which could help in
reconstructing a balanced view of history of the country. It
is also important to study the history and developments in
the region, the geographical location of the country, its
position on trade routes, etc.

Does Sri Lanka have a history in that sense?
I am amused when some Sinhala chauvinists say that liberals
and progressives advocating the restructuring of the
multiethnic and multicultural Lanka are wrong because they
don’t know the history of Lanka. According to the
understanding of the author of this article (referred to as
‘this author’ subsequently), it is the Sinhala chauvinists
who have been misled by a biased and distorted account of
the history of this island.

There is no balanced and well-researched
history of ancient Lanka, partly because of the paucity of
sources, partly because findings from ancient South Indian
sources have not been correlated and integrated, and partly
because archaeology and epigraphy of ancient Lanka have not
been given primacy as sources but have been interpreted in
the light of the Mahavamsa, a chronicle written with a very
narrow vision many centuries later.

Professor S. Paranavitana, an Archaeological Commissioner,
was a dominating figure in archaeology, epigraphy, and
ancient history of Lanka for more than fifty years during
the last century. As he was writing and publishing over such
a long period, he was seen to be influenced by modern ideas
occasionally. But such instances were very few and
exceptional.

For him, the Mahavamsa was almost like a
bible to the Christians. Instead of giving primacy to
archaeology and epigraphy, and supplementing his findings
with material from the Mahavamsa, he was trying his best to
interpret archaeology and epigraphy in the light of the
Mahavamsa. The Mahavamsa has been trying to minimize the
South Indian component of the Lankan culture, adopting an
anti-Tamil attitude and trying to maximize the North Indian
component of Lankan culture.

On his retirement as Archaeological
Commissioner, he was appointed as Professor of Archaeology
in the University of Ceylon (the only university in Lanka at
that time) for a short period. The University of Ceylon had
a project for publishing an authoritative history of the
country and Prof. Paranavitana functioned as its editor. He
was adopting the Mahavamsa as his guide, especially for the
early period of Lankan history. He himself admitted that he
had rejected some portions of a Tamil contributor to the
volume on the ancient period of Lankan history, because
those portions didn’t fit into what he considered Lankan
history.

Archeology and ancient Brahmi inscriptions
presented difficult problems for him which he could not
explain from his reading of the Mahavamsa. A number of
archaeological sites which are associated with megalithic
culture of Dravidian South India have been located in
explorations in different parts of South India. Finding no
clue from the Mahavamsa, he refused to give those findings
their due importance as he had to accept that ancient South
India and Lanka had shared the same culture; instead he
explained them away as over-flows from South India.

Ancient inscriptions of Lanka had been
written in Prakrit language and Brahmi script. Even though
Brahmi script had been used throughout South Asia from
Asokan times, it had regional variations. In addition, South
Indian Brahmi needed special characters to write some
special letters of Dravidian, especially Tamil. Early Brahmi
inscriptions of Lanka have all the symbols of south Indian
Brahmi. Paranavitana, believing the Mahavamsa version of the
story, was very ingenuous in trying to argue that the early
Brahmi script of Lanka was following the north Indian
version of Brahmi.

Even though some Sinhala language and
archaeology scholars like Prof. P.E.E. Fernando, a Professor
of Sinhala language from University of Ceylon/ Peradeniya
and Dr. W.S. Karunaratna, one time colleague and successor
to Paranavitana as Archaelogical Commissioner have pointed
out the closeness between south Indian Brahmi and early
Lankan Brahmi, Paranavitana refused to accept the obvious to
the end of his life.

Paranavitana remained so influential that
Dr.W.S.Karunaratna could publish his Cambridge University
doctoral thesis as a publication of the Archaeology
Department only after Paranavitana’s death. This author has
read a research paper entitled, 'Commonness in early
Palaeography of Tamilnadu and early Sri Lanka’, which was
later published in Proceedings and Transactions of the
Fifth
International Association of Tamil Research, 1981.

The early Brahmi inscriptions of Lanka are in Prakrit
language like other contemporary inscriptions of South Asia,
excluding ancient Tamilakam but they have so many words
which are not found in Prakrit or Sanskrit in other parts of
South Asia. A considerable number of them appear to be Tamil
terms and they could be easily explained as Tamil terms,
drawing comparable material from ancient Tamil Sangam
literature as well as ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions.
Paranavitana was very ingenuous in trying to derive all
these words from some Sanskrit or Prakrit forms.

On the point of language, no Sinhala scholar
has pointed out the Tamil influence in ancient Brahmi
inscriptions partly because they are not competent in
classical Tamil and partly because they cannot look beyond
the Mahavamsa. This author has published a research paper in
two parts, entitled ‘ Tamil influence in ancient Sri Lanka,
with special reference to early Brahmi inscriptions’ in
Journal of Tamil Studies, 1979 and 1980.

Dr. S.K. Sittampalam, Professor of History
and Archaeology of Jaffna University, has also important
publications pointing to ancient Lanka forming a part of
ancient South Indian cultural region in so many ways. In
2003, Iravatham Mahadevan has published ‘Early Tamil
Epigraphy’, which has been included in the prestigious
Harvard Oriental Series, where he points out the occurrence
of all the special sounds of early Tamil Brahmi letters
among early Lankan Brahmi inscriptions.

This author has been waiting for twenty five
years to explain how Tamil influence could have been so
strong in ancient Lankan history. But till now, it was not
possible to explain how so much Tamil influence could be
seen in Lankan Brahmi inscriptions because the Mahavamsa and
other related chronicles relate the ancient history of the
island in such a way that it is not possible to envisage how
Tamil influence could have been so strong. Even though this
author was skeptical about the claims of the Mahavamsa, he
himself could not point out that the Mahavamsa contained
distortions and misrepresentations.

Recent developments in Lanka has given the author a clue.
The lesson that I learned is that reality could be very
different from what it is declared to be. Sinhala chauvinism
under the leadership of the JVP and JHU could twist and turn
anything. Outward demonization of the LTTE, implying
demonization of Tamil nationalism by the State and by
Sinhala chauvinists seems to be so complete that the just
cause of the long suffering and long struggling Tamils, have
been out of international focus.

Mahinda Rajapakse has campaigned on the
Sinhala chauvinist election platform, closing all doors for
a just peace settlement to the Tamils but he appeals to the
international community for help to bring the LTTE to the
negotiating table. It is almost four years now after the
signing of the Cease-Fire Agreement between the government
and the LTTE. The government has still not implemented some
of the key provisions of that Agreement The security forces
continue to occupy houses, schools and fertile cultivated
lands of many thousands of Tamil civilians who continue to
languish in many makeshift temporary shelters for years.
There was a Tamil Resurgence movement among the Northeast
Tamils and there was a popular campaign demanding the
implementation of the key provision of the CFA, especially
the one referring to the resettling of the Tamils .

Rajapakse has appointed well-known Sinhala chauvinists, who
have been clamouring for war as the final solution to the
ethnic conflict, to the top posts in defense and security.
Along with para-military forces, who are paid and armed by
military intelligence, they are letting loose a reign of
terror partly on Tamil nationalists and LTTE supporters and
partly on innocent Tamil civilians in the Northeast. The aim
seems to be total silencing of the Tamils forever.

But government spokesmen, like Prasad
Samarasinghe, Keheliye Rambukwelle, Gothabhaya Rajapakse,
Chandra Fernando, Sarath Fonseka and Kotakadeniya do not
bother even for a moment to check or investigate any violent
act against Tamils. According to them, the armed forces
maintain such high discipline, there are no para-military
groups in government held area in the Northeast,
Vigneswaran
must have been killed by his Tamil political rivals, six
youth in Trincomalee beach died
because the bomb they were carrying exploded, Tamil
civilians in
Mannar and
Kayts killed because they were friendly with the armed
forces, some Tamil youth came in one three- wheeler at
Nelliadi and attacked an army check-point, so an army person
opened fire and killed them all, etc., etc.

Most of Sinhala-controlled media also seem to echo what
their government dishes out. This is how State and most of
Sinhala-controlled media report matters; they don’t care
that all these can be found to be lies in independent
investigations. The recent ban imposed by Canada and the
European Union on the LTTE, taking seriously the biased and
partisan account of the government versions of the
situation, seems to have encouraged the government that they
could do anything to the Tamils, say anything about the
Tamils and get away from them with impunity. The State media
and most of the Sinhala- owned media are united in putting
forward anti-Tamil and anti-LTTE versions, without caring
for the facts. So much of misrepresentation and distortion
are seen in their quest to preserve Sinhala Buddhist
hegemony that this could be a reflection of a Sinhala
character trait.

The author started looking carefully into the Mahavamsa to
see whether there could have been misrepresentations and
distortions. The Mahavamsa could have been using a code
which should be broken if one wants to be sure of facts.
Modern critical scholars have already pointed out that there
were certain shortcomings in the narration of the Mahavamsa
as most probably there were no written records before the
introduction of Buddhism in Tissa’s reign and the story
before that period might be recollecting vague memories.

Let us begin with Vijaya, who starts the Sinhala royal
lineage. According to the Mahavamsa, he wanted to marry into
a royal family and sent pearls and gems to the Pandya king
to ask for a princess for himself and women for his
followers. The Pandya king obliged.

Paranavitana and his followers find this statement of the
Mahavamsa very uncomfortable. They have taken pains to argue
that even though the people of the Pandya kingdom might have
been Tamil, the Pandya dynasty could have been a north
Indian ksatriya dynasty, as they don’t want to accept that
even from the beginning of the historical period, Tamils
could have been an important element in Lankan population.

The Mahavamsa also says that Vijaya continued to send
pearls and gems to the Pandya king. This seems to be a
euphemism for Vijaya being a vassal of the Pandya king. The
reason given in the Mahavamsa for Vijaya opting for a Pandya
marriage alliance also appears to be inappropriate. Vijaya
seems to have been influenced by a feeling of insecurity.
Vijaya established his kingdom in the backyard of south
India, which was Dravidian speaking. The three kingdoms
closest to Lanka- Kerala, Chola and Pandya - were Tamil
speaking. Vijaya also wanted to be an ally of the Pandya
because then only exploitation of pearl fishery resources in
the Gulf of Mannar could be smooth.

According to the Mahavamsa, Vijaya and his Pandya queen had
no issue. Their successor was Pandu- Vasudeva. Was he a
Pandya? That was most likely, as either her brother or her
nephew must have been the next in line. Mahavamsa seems to
have spun a story to hide this fact. According to the
Mahavamsa, Vijaya sent a message to his brother king in
Bengal to come and take over the kinship of Lanka and the
latter sent one of his sons. Mahavamsa claims that Pandu
Vasudeva was Vijaya’s nephew. This appears very unlikely.
Did Vijaya keep contact with his family which exiled him and
his followers as good riddance? Could Vijaya’s brother send
his young son to live among evil people so far away? Why did
Vijaya not marry into a family in Bengal and instead chose a
Pandya princess? As Vijaya had a large number of siblings,
he could have married even a sister, following on the
example set up by his father. Who really succeeded Vijaya
must have been Vijaya’s queen’s nephew, who was a Pandya.

There is no mention in the Mahavamsa of Pandu Vasudeva
sending annual presents to the Pandyas as he himself was a
Pandya. This Pandu/Pandya connection was very bothersome to
the author of the Mahavamsa, as the grandson of this king
was also calling himself a Pandu-k-Abhaya, again pointing to
their Pandya lineage. The Mahavamsa author had to create
another folder and another story to hide this Pandu/Pandya
connection.

He created another Pandu and connected him to the
Buddha’s Sakya lineage so that Buddhist connection to the
Sinhala royal family also gets strengthened among
incredulous Sinhala Buddhists. There was a Sakya Pandu who
was pushed out of his tribal area by the Kosala king to the
Gangetic valley where he set up his rule. His daughter was
so much sought after by other kings that he exiled her in a
boat as he was not willing to accept any one of them as a
suitor for his daughter. When his daughter accidentally
landed in Lanka, her brothers welcomed her. The Mahavamsa
does not say why and how her brothers came to Lanka. Was
Lanka Buddhist at that time? As the Buddha’s three visits to
the island should be dismissed as fiction, Sakya Pandu’s
story appears to be another fiction, invented just to
explain away this inconvenient Pandu/Pandya connection. If
there is any truth in this story, all the Sinhala Buddhist
kings might have been claiming that they were Pandus.
Dutthagamini, who is referred to as the greatest hero of the
Sinhala Buddhists, might have proudly declared himself a
Pandu.

The Mahavamsa itself has inadvertently mentioned a fact
which helps to place Pandu-k-Abhaya as a Tamil king. It was
this king who was associated with building up Anuradhapura
as an urban area. According to the Mahavamsa, he was the
first king to build an irrigation work which was named in
the Mahavamsa as a kulama, a Tamil word. This strengthens
this author’s argument that the Pandus were indeed Pandyas.

The Mahavamsa also mentions that Pandu-k-Abhaya
patronized a Jain monk and provided a lodging for him. In
ancient Tamilakam, it was only in the Pandya kingdom that
the Jains seems to have received patronage. It is still not
clear how ancient Tamil Brahmi script came into being; but
all ancient stone inscriptions in the ancient Pandya kingdom
deal with donation of cave lodgings to Jain monks. This is
also proof that that the Pandu kings mentioned in the
Mahavamsa refer to connection with the Pandya kingdom. It is
also interesting to note here that according to the
Mahavamsa, a great grandson of Sakya Pandu, patronized
Jainism but not Buddhism. Probably Sakya Pandu’s descendents
in Lanka have not heard of the Buddha or of the Buddhist
monks!

It is in this light that we have to look at references to
Eelam in ancient Tamil Brahmi inscriptions and Sangam
literature. According to a Tamil Brahmi inscription, a man
from Eelam is said to have established a cave-dwelling for
Jaim monks, on a hill adjoining Mathurai. This indicates
that provision of lodging for Jain monks in Anuradhapura by
Pandu-k-Abhaya was functional and Jains were moving about
between Lanka and the Pandya kingdom as the rulers were
closely connected. In the Sangam Eight Anthologies, there
was a Tamil poet with the name Puthan Thevanar, connected
with Eelam and then with Eelam and Mathurai. He must have
come from Eelam to Mathurai and then became a permanent
resident there. Pattinappalai, also a Sangam text, mentions
the import of food from Eelam at the port city of
Kavirippumpattinam. Unfortunately the name of the food item
is not specified. All these indicate that the Mahavamsa
gives only a partisan and incomplete account with a
considerable amount of distortion and misrepresentation.

According to the Mahavamsa, there were only two Pandu kings.
But it appears highly improbable. There must have been many
Pandu kings but facts were probably not available when the
Mahavamsa was composed. Pandu-k-Abhaya is said to have
become king when he was thirty seven years old and ruled for
seventy years. According to the Mahavamsa, Devanampiya
Tissa’s father was king Mutasiva. Mutasiva is said to have
ruled for sixty years.

The Mahavamsa could have been correct to say that
Mutasiva took his name from his mother’s lineage as his
father’s lineage was Pandu. The Mahavamsa claims that
Pandu-k-Abhaya and Mutasiva, father and son, ruled for one
hundred and thirty years. According to the Mahavamsa,
Pandu-k-Abhaya married Suvannapali, Mutasiva’s mother when
he was quite young. That means Mutasiva must have been born
before his father’s reign started. Then we have to take it
that both father and son lived for more than one hundred
years each. One has to be very incredulous to believe in
such fiction. Considering the normal human span, there
should have been at least three Pandu/Pandya rulers in
addition between this father and son.

Mutasiva and Tissa giving up the Pandu prefix seems to
denote the Sinhalas trying to assert their independence from
the Pandu/Pandya domination. They had a chance of forming an
alliance with a north Indian kingdom. About the time of
Mutasiva, the Mauryan empire, the most extensive Indian
empire before the British Indian empire, was becoming very
powerful in India. During Asoka’s reign, the Mauryan empire,
having its capital city of Pataliputra in Bihar, extended to
the northern borders of ancient Tamil land. Mutasiva must
have felt confident about disowning Pandu/Pandya connection
and asserting his independence, with the help of another
Indian ally. Tissa, his son, according to the Mahavamsa,
sent valuable presents to Asoka, his friend. Asoka, in turn,
is said to have accepted them, sent back some presents and
asked Tissa to undergo another coronation and to accept his
religion of Buddhism, taking also Asoka’s title of
Devanampiya.

This description seems to be an euphemism for Tissa
sending tribute to Asoka and Asoka accepting Tissa as a
vassal. Tissa underwent his second coronation with the new
title and soon became a Buddhist also. It is important to
note here that Tissa did not take up the Pandu prefix. If it
had any connection to Sakya Pandu of the Buddha’s tribe, as
claimed by the Mahavamsa, Tissa and his Sinhala Buddhist
successors must have been eager to assume it.

The Mauryan Buddhist empire could not give Lanka long
term security. The Mauryan Buddhist dynasty was overthrown
and Sunga Hindu dynasty came to power. This empire
disintegrated. It was during this period that Tamils came to
power in Lanka twice. From the way Mahavamsa describes them,
one can say that they were Tamil adventurers. The Mahavamsa
itself admits that the Buddhists did not suffer at the hands
of those early Tamil rulers. It became difficult for the
Sinhalas to dislodge Elara, who was extremely just and
benign, even according to the Mahavamsa. When one peruses
the long list of Sinhala kings, there was none who could
equal Elara. Dutthagamani from Ruhuna had to mobilize
Buddhism behind him to fight against the non-Buddhist Tamil
Elara whose rule was found to be acceptable to people of
north Lanka for nearly half a century (44 years).

The Sinhala element in Lanka seems to have felt a sense of
insecurity from the very beginning. They claimed to be of
north Indian origin but they were a despised lot in north
India at least at the beginning. When they landed in Lanka,
they seemed to have exploited the indigenous population, by
living with the indigenous women and killing off the others
who might oppose them. They came face to face with the
Pandyas who were sharing the extremely profitable pearl
fishery in the Gulf of Mannar.

They seemed to secure themselves by making marriage
alliances with South Indian women. In order to gain
respectability with the Pandyas, they turned treacherous to
the indigenous women who were living with them and drove
them and their children out to the jungle. It is amazing how
the Sinhalas could claim to be bhumiputras (sons of the
soil) when they appear to have committed a genocide of the
earlier inhabitants of the island. According to
archaeological evidence, human beings were living in the
island for thousands of years. If the Sinhalas claim that
they were the descendents of the indigenous people, they
should accept that the Mahavamsa is a fiction. In fairness
to the Mahavamsa, it should be mentioned that it admits that
Vijaya gave up his evil ways, after his marriage to the
Pandya princess. Tamil culture must have exerted its
influence. Unfortunately, these evil ways continue in the
genes of a substantial number of their descendents even now.

Sri Lanka seems to have had different names in ancient
times. No documents- neither Lankan inscriptions nor Indian
inscriptions nor foreign notices – mention the names of
Lanka and Sihala/Sinhala before the beginning of the Common
era. Asoka, claimed to be so close to Lanka by later Lankan
chronicles, has never mentioned the name Lanka, even when he
had referred to the island. When he was mentioning his
border states in the south, he was mentioning in his Prakrit
inscription, the Tamil states and Tambapanni. Tambapanni is
the equivalent to Tamraparni in Sanskrit. Tamraparni is the
name of a river in southern Pandya kingdom, which flows into
the sea in the Gulf of Mannar.

The Pandyas had a second capital at Korkai, at the mouth
of the Tamraparni river. Very close to Korkai, a megalithic
cultural site, associated with Dravidian culture at
Adiccanallur have yielded On the opposite coast of the
latter-day Lanka, archaeologists have come across Pomparippu,
located between Puttalam and Mannar, which also has yielded
megalithic cultural artifacts. Tambapanni must have been the
name of this settlement at one time. Later the whole island
must have been referred to as Tambapanni. The Mahavamsa
mentions that Vijaya and his followers came to Tambapanni
but it does not give much importance to this name probably
because it wanted to belittle the Pandya influence over
ancient Lanka. In this connection it is important to note
that Greek notices gave this island the name of Tabrobane, a
variant form of Tambapanni. All these facts point to strong
Pandya influence in Lanka for many generations at the
beginning of Lankan history.

It is often said that history repeats itself. In the
eighteenth century, The Sinhala kings in Kandy maintained
their independence but the Dutch controlled the maritime
areas of the island and imposed restrictions on foreign
trade of the Kandyan kingdom. The Sinhala kings established
marriage alliances with Nayakkar dynasty then ruling in
Mathurai, the capital of the earlier Pandyas. The Sinhala
royal line had no legitimate successor in 1739.

The last four kings in the Mahavamsa from 1739 to 1815
were Nayakkar princes who were referred to as Vaduka Tamils
in Sinhala records. They claimed descent from Telugus
(Telugu is another Dravidian language) but spoke Tamil
language when they were ruling southern Tamilnadu from
Mathurai. Some Sinhala chiefs wanted to dislodge the
Nayakkar and become kings themselves but they could neither
agree among themselves nor get sufficient popular support.
The British who established their domination over the
maritime provinces of the island by 1798 exploited the
ambition of the Sinhala chiefs to make them traitors to
their king. Wikrema Rajasinghe alias Kannusamy, the last
Lankan/Tamil king, was made a prisoner and exiled to India.
The treacherous Sinhala chiefs gained nothing. The whole of
the island of Lanka became a British colony for 133 years.
Could modern day Sinhala politicians learn any lesson from
this history?